Man of Steel: Tony Swatton

Forging the perfect blade is
as much craftsmanship as it is research and work ethic. You might not see his name in the credits, but metalsmith Tony Swatton is the man behind 20 years of iconic movie weapons.

Credit: Timothy BanksTony Swatton puts me on hold
for the best possible reason—a hoard of Vikings have entered his shop. Wizards,
pirates, superheroes, evil aliens, general badasses, and anyone else
brandishing a prop weapon are Tony’s bread and butter, so it’s not entirely out
of place for a burly group of seafaring pillagers to come walking through the
door. Swatton, a metalsmith by trade, has created iconic television and film
weapons, ranging from Dustin Hoffman’s titular prosthetic hand in Hook
to Wesley Snipes’ vampire hunting steel in Blade, for more than 200 feature productions. Now he’s showing the
public how it’s done.

In his web series, Man at
Arms, Swatton forges real versions of both prop and fantasy weapons and
armor. Think everything from Wolverine’s claws to Batman’s batarangs to Oddjob’s deadly hat. The
series immediately gained traction and has drawn in more than 55 million
viewers since it launched in February, 2013, raising Swatton’s profile from
prop maker to name brand.

Get In Media: For a project like the Pirates of the Caribbean
movies, or any historical production you’ve done, how much historical research
goes into creating weapons?

Tony Swatton: For the first Pirates movie, we were not as
worried about historical accuracy. It was based on a Disney ride, really. The
prop master went to London and bought some historical cutlasses and small
swords, court swords, and brought those back as reference. There’s an element
where Johnny Depp is pinned to the wall of the forge with one of the swords.
That sword is a repurposed 1862 Civil War saber that I’d shortened down to a
cutlass and it ended up being a featured piece. Geoffrey Rush’s sword for the
first two or three movies was actually an 1813, 1814 Valmy Napoleonic French
kind of saber that, again, refitted with a different blade with a green patina.

The golden age of pirates is
really about 1750. That’s 65 years late to have an anachronistic sword being
shown. If you did a movie about the 1950s and everyone’s dressed that way like Grease
or something and then all of a sudden you have people in a different fashion,
it really clashes. People who know would be able to see that there were weapons
in that movie that were inaccurate for the time, but they’ve now become iconic
pieces and that’s what they expect to see. It’s kind of funny.

GIM: Do you get called out when something is anachronistic?

TS: Yeah, occasionally. … At one point on a Man at
Arms episode, I was talking about the groove in a sword called a fuller and
explaining that it was made with a fullering tool, but in the common vernacular
it was called a blood groove and I explained why it was called a blood groove.
Then I went to dispel that it doesn’t actually work that way. [Man at Arms
editors] cut the explanation off the end, so it made me sound like I was saying
it’s called a blood groove to let the suction of the blood in the body come
out. A lot of the bladesmiths are like, “You’ve just posted this to almost
two million viewers saying it’s a blood groove.” That’s where the fact checking
is nice.

GIM: In your
Reddit Ask Me Anything, you stated that you wished Captain America’s shield
[created on the web series, not the actual one used in the movie] had come out
differently. How so?

TS: One of the things with Man At Arms that people
don’t really realize is during a five-day filming schedule, and that’s starting
at about eight or nine in the morning until dark, six or seven at night, I
create over those five days six weapons. That’s everything from—in season two I
believe it was, we did [Cloud’s] Buster sword [from Final Fantasy VII],
we did the Kingdom Hearts’ Keyblade, we did Gimli’s axe [from Lord of
the Rings], we did Captain America’s shield, and probably the Klingon bat’leth
and one other weapon. … Those are all produced in five days, those six
weapons, so I’m trying to get everything done and make it look right and
capture all the elements on camera.

Captain America’s shield, we
initially planned on getting it spun, but that would have taken it to an
outside processor and doing a spinning lathe and cutting everything and putting
it together. They weren’t able to process it, so I had to do it with all the
hand tools or the other machinery in-house. Then we were going to assemble it
onto a stainless steel backing plate, which wasn’t able to form out in time, so
we did it out of a low carbon steel which was not as strong. Altogether, it
would have worked OK if I just had more time to put into it. With everything
else that was going there, we were able to finish Captain America’s shield on
the test day at about six o’clock before it got dark at about 6:45. It was
really on crunch time. It just ran out of time.

GIM: When you are working on a weapon for film or
television, how do you balance craftsmanship with speed?

TS: I generally will not release something until it’s
done correctly and a lot of times that requires just working through the night
to get everything finished up to meet my quality standards. I’ve been at this
location in Burbank for almost 23 years, I think … and that’s a pretty good
track record for doing handcrafted items, props, and things that I make. I’ve
got a pretty good reputation because the quality standards are up there.

GIM: When you’re working for a fantasy or sci-fi production
and creating weapons that do not exist in real life, what is your process?

TS: I want to make it a tool. I want it to be something
that you can actually carry and use as an extension of your arm, which is what
all weapons really are. If it’s too unwieldy and sharp edges coming back at
your body, I would generally decline that kind of commission. It would set me
up for failure. It wouldn’t allow me to create something to the best effect of
what I’m known for doing. I try to incorporate historical elements of things
that work and make certain that they work correctly and they look good.

GIM: Many of the historical pieces that you’ve created,
the actual pieces would be insanely heavy for the people wielding them. How do
you modify weapons for actors?

TS: A lot of times I will make things out of aluminum. I
use an alloy of aluminum that’s extremely tough and I’ll make the blades out of
those. … I just grind them into shape and remove everything that doesn’t look
like a sword blade. That will lighten the weight out a lot. That will give the
actor much better control of the weapon that they’re holding. I also sometimes
will make the hilt and pommel and everything out of aluminum and totally
skeletonize the thing so it just weighs nothing. We did a sword for Pirates
of the Caribbean completely out of aluminum for one of the actors who had
hurt his elbow or something. He really couldn’t sword fight with a heavy sword,
and it probably weighed from a three-pound sword down to three ounces. … Sometimes
I’ll make things hollow. I made an axe for Paul Bunyan for a movie in the early
‘90s called Tall Tale. The axe would have weighed 56 pounds just for the
axe head as we made it originally, and we were able to get it down to something
that you could swing around with just one hand.

GIM: Has technology like 3-D printing affected your job?

TS: I think it might have a little bit. I know in some of
the movies I’ve worked on, the prop masters and costume designers used to come
in and need a lot of stuff and now what’s happening is they are buying a 3-D
printer for $50,000 to $60,000 and hiring a technician who can generate the
computer program and printing up their 3-D product in the art department.

GIM: Do you have any fear of that kind of thing?

TS: Not really. What I can do, as you see in Man At
Arms, is create something that can’t be done with a 3-D printer in a very
short lead time and give you a very detailed, high-quality reference artwork.
We were worried about the same thing with the high definition cameras coming
out but, in my case, the closer you get to the work the more details you see.
It doesn’t make it look bad. Actually, you can see more of the details that
make it look better.

GIM: How has the prop industry changed since you got into
it?

TS: … It comes down to a shorter lead time. They want it
bigger, faster, better, and cheaper, and it really doesn’t work that way. There
really is that triangle where you get what you pay for. If you want it good and
fast then you’ve got to pay more. You can’t get good, fast, and cheap. I like
to have six weeks to produce something. That’s kind of my basis for price
structure, but I’ve had people call me up at seven o’clock in the morning and
say, “We need this thing by one o’clock in the afternoon. What do you
have? What can you create that we can capture that image?” That’s a little
stressful and that’s where the experience that I’ve had over the years really
pays off, that I’m able to do stuff or look at it and go, “No, that’s not
a possibility” and decline the commission.

GIM: Are there any specific directors or franchises that
you’d like to make a weapon for that you haven’t?

TS: Not really. I’ve worked with a lot of big names out
there, but they may not know that I’ve worked for them. The odd thing is that
I’ve only been credited in one feature film and that was Don Juan DeMarco,
where I created the swords that Johnny Depp used when he was kind of menacing
Marlon Brando up on top of the billboard. For Hook or Pirates of the
Caribbean or Zorro or Blade or any of these other things you
see, you won’t see my name in the credits. I’m basically unlisted.

GIM: Why? You created the hook of Hook. It seems
like a given to be credited.

TS: In Hook back in 1991, they actually brought me
a blueprint that I matched exactly to what they needed and we sent it out to
engravers to get done and it all came through my shop. That was my first big
project. I’m also not a union shop so I don’t belong to the Local 44 union.
There’s no one fighting for me to make sure my name is credited, but with the
recognition of Man At Arms, there are close to 30 million viewers on
that. It’s kind of working out to the point that by adding my name to the
credits, it actually makes their movie, kind of like top billing an actor or
director. I don’t want to put myself in that caliber, but if they say I made
weapons or costumes for a thing, now people know who I am. I expect to get more
credits in the future.

GIM: What do you recommend for somebody who wants to move
into making weaponry?

TS: I highly recommend joining ABANA [the Artist
Blacksmith Association of North America]. In California, there’s the California
Blacksmith Association. … If you’re into knife-making there’s the ABS, which
is the American Bladesmith Society. … Between ABANA, CBA, and ABS, you’ll be
able to learn a lot of things. My recommendation to anyone who wants to do this
is to do it. Get a hammer. Hit a piece of metal. Get a file and file away on
stuff. Get as many tools and practice and practice and practice, and just do
what you can.

New Man at Arms episodes air every other Monday. The full series is
available on YouTube.